Remnants of a Kansas City Ice Storm

The fresh sunrise is the size of a half dollar held close to the face. It ignites the ice-encrusted world and petals into cold flame the frail blooms of an early spring. The ice is death, but amid the veins of light that web skyward it suggets a life of its own. I am tired but it invigorates me and I wonder if I am glowing as well. In a contest between age and youth, the dogs play in the still morning, their breath visible. I imagine their barks are cacophanous. Perhaps they are just opening and closing their mouths in a silent parody of conversation. The crunch underfoot is delicious and I laugh as they pound their paws in the snow towards the hearth warmth of the house.

Blue Dreams

“When I bring up his father, he becomes very upset and says he is nothing like his father and goes home to drink, which makes him very much like his father.”

He snapped awake in the frigid night, chest heaving. Moonlight poured through the window into his small room, splashing silver light on his narrow bed, the bottle of rum on a single chair, jacket on the coat hanger. His breath steamed cold blue picture-scenes and in all of them he died. He shivered. “I’ve been in the reality game too long. I need a vacation,” he muttered and turned in bed, throwing the blanket over his shoulders.

“Poor chap. Got his head in the sand. Liable to rip it out, if he tried, and he’d be running ’round like a headless chicken.”

“He’s been through enough. He’s been—well, is—everybody. I wish we could cut him a break.”

“Discovered morality, haven’t you? You and your fads. Besides, he’s been broken. He can’t change anything.”

“Remember it’s also yourself you’re talking about.”

This time the Time Traveller woke to the sepulchral fog that flooded the countryside to drown the town square, and from his window he watched a cat on a ledge paw the condensation. The fog swirled and eddied: he could empathize. The moon, a grinning half dollar, lay low in the sky. In the silver scene he pulled his jeans on, slipped into a shirt, took his jacket, and went out of the door.

On second thought he came back for the rum.